There are many silver linings in this otherwise dark cloud.
One of those silver linings, for me, was discovering just how rich I am in friends and relations.
From the moment of my diagnosis, Deb and I have received a great outpouring of support, sympathy, and offers to help. I am very humbled. I found out that I was rich in relationships I didn’t know I had, or still had.
People I haven’t seen or heard from in decades have reached out to give us comfort. Cousins and other relations whose relationships I’ve sadly neglected have sent us touching electronic missives. My work friends spent time and money to put together a chemo survival basket and have aided in so many other ways. Emails and texts have come from all over the country.
You know I am by nature something of a recluse, not someone who goes out his way to surround himself with people. That’s why it’s simply amazing to me, the number of people who have reached out to us. I had no idea there were that many people out there who even remembered me, to be honest. Again, I am very humbled–and grateful.
There is nothing like a serious illness to remind you what is most important in life–and, turns out, it’s not money, status, fame, or things like that. For me, turns out, the most important thing in life is/are the relationships that you make and keep with family, relatives, and friends.
I have not always been good about maintaining these relationships, so it is with hat in hand that I reach out now to thank you for your very kind, very gracious, messages of comfort and empathy.
For most of you who are reading this, we knew each other some time in our past. For some of us, it is many decades since and we are no doubt very different people now than that which our memories paint. But I have been remembering a lot in recent days, and your messages have made those memories vibrant, so much so that the time between then and now seems to disappear. Photos like these help me remember.
I hope that this note finds you and yours in good health and spirits–or, in the very least, I pray that the burdens placed on your shoulders are light. Take care of yourself and please remember that I hold your memory, and our relationship, precious.
Ken…I want to thank you and your family for having the courage to share your “new normal” with me. I’m not sure I would have the strength. It grounds me and crystallizes my perspective every day. I am humbled by all of you. Continued positive thoughts and relentless prayers for you and yours.
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Hi, Ken, it’s your cousin Crescent.
I don’t know if you remember the times I traipsed across your life, enjoying the wonders of the Freezette, cocoons in jars, crayfish under rocks, and wandering up hillsides and down. I loved every minute. And I thank so very much for the gift of those precious images you have shared with us. They mean the world to me. I guess many of us from Boccardi stock run to the reclusive. I know I did. But I have found that, as we rediscover eachother, reclusive does NOT mean unremembered or unloved. When I first met Greg again decades after his marriage, it was as if we had just parted the day before. And just two weeks ago I had a visit from Jeffery, Uncle Tommy’s son, and his family! I hadn’t seen him since I was 8! There is something we share as as family, a certain part of our essential fabric, that we recognize and understand in eachother, in a way no one else can. And one day we discover that, somehow, all those gossamer threads that distance should have sundered are still there, tested and tempered by time… and tide.
So I can honestly say that I love you, Kenneth, and that my prayers are with you, and that I see your face as a young boy, ernest, and focused, and determined. I hope I will see it in laughter one day, as you look back on this time, having found a new, and joyous, normal.
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